How to disable backups during auto-updates?

[humptydumpty]

I have the nextcloud app backups disabled in cloudron since I have multiple copies of the files on different devices. Yet, it attempts to backup all the files while updating the app. I know I can tick "skip backup" during a manual update but it's a pain to keep up with updates. Any way to bypass or disable the backup phase during auto-updates?

@girish I noticed the backup upload speeds on my nextcloud homeserver to my s3 (backblaze) are identical to my contabo VPS which I have problems with (2-4 MBps). Could it be a CR bug or a Backblaze issue and not a VPS issue as I first suspected?

Thanks!

[jdaviescoates]

@humptydumpty you could just disable automatic backups?

https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#disable-automatic-backups

[girish]

@humptydumpty said in How to disable backups during auto-updates?:

Any way to bypass or disable the backup phase during auto-updates?

But this would be dangerous though. Users will just update with no backup . Update will fail and now there is nothing to revert to. For example, what is your own strategy if you log in tomorrow, nextcloud updated to a new version and nextcloud dashboard doesn't load.

[girish]

@jdaviescoates I think @humptydumpty wants to way to enable automatic updates but disable backups.

Cloudron always takes a backup of an app before an app update. This is regardless of the (per app) backup setting. So, the only way to make an update work without taking a backup is actually by clicking the "Skip backup" option in the UI when you manually update. This design is intentional though.

[humptydumpty]

@girish Yes, I'm aware of the risk. I would reinstall Nextcloud, set it up, and re-add the nextcloud folder in the clients. I'm not against backups if it can skip the user media/files and only back up the app stuff like users, app settings, plugins, etc. I have over 200GB of files (and growing) and backing that data up is a waste of resources especially when I'm not worried about data loss. I have multiple devices so that covers things being at different physical locations and then I have periodic manual backups that I take and keep as cold storage off-site also. I do have auto-backups disabled and would like to keep auto-updates enabled if possible.

[humptydumpty]

@jdaviescoates I do have it disabled. The problem is that it takes a backup when auto-updating. I can manually update and click on "skip backup" but I'm trying to find a way to keep auto-updates on and have it skip backups altogether or if we could have a backup option ignore the user files and only back up the app settings in case things go south. Data loss is not a problem since I keep multiple copies of the files locally.

The reason for all this is because of slow backup speeds which end up failing so I had to disable daily backups to the s3 bucket. Today, I noticed that I was two updates behind even though I have auto-updates turned on. I spotted nextcloud in the middle of the update process but it's stuck at backing up the files with 2MBps upload speeds and then it went to 0MBps and I decided stop it, and manually run the updates with "skip backup" turned on.

BTW, there were no failed/error messages in the dashboard about the backups/updates not going through.

[humptydumpty]

I was revisiting this issue and then remembered that CR 9.0 will have multiple destination backups, so I should be able to have NC back up to an attached drive locally instead of trying to upload hundreds of GB's to an s3 bucket.

[jadudm]

I'm going to re-open this thread for a moment.

I ran into this with a Minio instance.

I intentionally set the instance up so that:

1. The data directory for Minio is on an external 8TB drive
2. I disabled backups for Minio
3. I run rclone to periodically clone this instance to B2

In short: I have no interest in Cloudron trying to handle backups for my object store. I currently replicate it periodically to B2 and (soon) to a second Minio object store, off-prem. (I was about to set up the off-prem replication when I encountered all of this.)

My Cloudron is hosted on a physical machine with a 1TB NVMe drive, and I have a 1TB SSD for backups. It simply is not possible for my backup drive to handle backing up Minio. This was a conscious choice on my part, because I knew I could disable backups on the Minio app. After digging around the forums, I discovered that I have to disable auto-updates for the app, and manually handle those---so I can manually skip the backups when updating.

However, I'd really like to benefit from automatic application updates.

I recognize the danger to users to have a way to disable backups on an app completely. But, my backups disk is now almost full, because I didn't realize it was backing up Minio on software update. Once Minio grew to a point that I could not fit it in the backup disk, that update started failing. It is only a matter of time until other app updates started to fail, because they do not fit in the remaining space, either. But, really... Minio (from my point of view, once I disabled updates) should never have hit my backup disk.

Admittedly there is a kind of Catch-22 here. However, once you give users the ability to put their data in separate locations, and disable backups on an app, it is reasonable (I would claim) for the user to expect backups to be disabled.

Apologies for raising this thread from the dead, but it feels like the "disable backups for this app" feature is actually not doing what it says. Or, it needs to be clearer: "Disable your scheduled backups, but not the backups that run when the app auto-updates, at which point we'll run a backup on the app and its data regardless. If you don't want Cloudron to backup your data, also disable auto-updates, so you can manually update the app and manually skip backups with each update."

[girish]

@jadudm right, completely disabling backups is currently not possible. You have to click Update manually and click "Skip backups" manually. This is an "escape hatch" button for Cloudron team to get out of situations where people ask us for support when they didn't back up at all. FWIW, the automatic backups button is called "Disable Automatic Backups" .

Maybe we can add a note in the Updates section that Cloudron will always take a back up before updates. There is no way out of this unless you click Update manually.

[jadudm]

Understood. And, yes: the support side would be horrible. Thank you!